


The Cambaire Machine

by dante_alicheery



Category: Community, Inspector Spacetime
Genre: Annie/Abed/Troy friendship, Dreamatorium adventures, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-10
Updated: 2012-08-10
Packaged: 2017-11-13 10:59:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/502789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dante_alicheery/pseuds/dante_alicheery
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Abed, Annie and Troy enter the Dreamatorium to reenact one of their favorite episodes of Inspector Spacetime: Season 1, Episode 9: The Cambaire Machine, with Inspector 9, Constable Reggie, and the incomparable Professor Lily Taylor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Cambaire Machine

“I always have to be Geneva. Why can’t I play Lily from the reboot? She’s so much cooler. Or Marianne, the companion of Inspectors Three and Four?” Annie asked, “She’s even got part of my name right.”

Abed paused, cocking his head slightly. Geneva was a fellow Infinity Knight, like the Inspector, and she had never shared the DARSIT with Constable Reggie. But Reggie was part of the Reboot too, so… “You could play Lily, if you want,” he pursed his lips, “but then I’d have to play Inspector number 9. I don’t think I have enough leather.”

“You’re telling me that you can reimagine the entire space-time continuum, but a leather jacket is too difficult?” she teased, leaning just a tad closer to him across the kitchen counter. “Or I suppose we could call Britta and ask to borrow one of hers…”

“Or you can just borrow mine,” Troy’s head popped out of the blanket fort, quickly disappearing to be replaced by a leather jacket hurtling out of the opening. Abed caught it out of the air easily.

“Since when have you been the leather jacket type, Troy?”

The young man’s head popped out of the blanket fort again. He looked slightly embarrassed. “Since the year I went as Blade for Halloween,” he defended. “And it was awesome.”

“Hey, we could do that this year. Blade Trinity,” Abed said. The slightly widening of his eyes belied his excitement. “I could be Hannibal King, and Annie could be Abigail, Whistler’s long lost daughter.” 

“Is that the vampire movie again?” Annie asked, genuinely confused.

Troy and Abed looked at each other instantly and had one of their little telepathic conversations, and nodded together. “We’re going to have a Blade marathon then, tonight,” Troy said, his tone brooking no argument. 

“But first, Dreamatorium,” Abed added, turning back to Annie, who was beaming in amusement. She didn’t particularly care about comics or their movie interpretations, but if the boys were going to include them in their fun, she wasn’t going to argue. “Go get changed, we’ll meet you in five minutes.”

A spur of excitement propelled Annie into her room and she dug into her closet, flinging clothes left and right. It made her a little anxious to leave the contents sprawled over her bed, but she could always clean up after, besides, she thought, tidying would be just the thing to ground her in reality after all the imaginary adventures. 

She extracted the T-shirt she had bought a few days ago, just in case they’d let her play Lily, a silk screen with the Scottish flag, a leather bomber jacket Britta had given her for her birthday, boots with just a bit of heel and a pair of tight black jeans. She looked in the mirror as she placed the reasonable approximation of Lily’s hat for that episode rakishly on her head. She had to admit, Lily looked a lot like Britta, though the real Lily had been ginger. 

She made sure to do her eye makeup bright and bold – Lily always had mascara on no matter the adventure, and she always looked fantastic. That, the chunky mod bracelet and the water pistol she had spray-painted silver completed the ensemble. When she looked in the mirror again, she didn’t see sweet, excitable Annie, but the rakish and charming Lily who just happened to have dark brown hair. 

“Absolutely splendid,” she quipped Inspector Nine’s catchphrase. The greatest thing about Lily was that she was from The Future, and thus didn’t have a British accent, so she wouldn’t be making a complete fool of herself. Despite all the practice, her accent still sounded more Cockney than anything else, and was full out ridiculous. Sometimes Troy couldn’t keep from laughing.

She strode out of her bedroom, to find the Inspector and his loyal Associate standing in the living room, looking bored, but their faces transformed as they caught sight of her.  
“Hello boys,” she grinned in the most Lily-ish way she could muster, confident with a hint of the seductive. It was easier than she thought it would be, because her roommates were definitely looking at her in appreciation. Well, Troy was. Abed was as impassive as ever.

Lily hadn’t been one for extremely revealing clothing, (though her T-shirt had a scoop neck low enough for some cleavage, and there was that one episode at the end of the Ninth Inspector’s run where she’d been naked for a bit) but everything she wore had been tight. 

“Professor Lillian Taylor reporting for duty.”

“Cool,” Inspector Abed said with a nod. He looked every inch Inspector Nine, leather jacket, jeans, dark colored T-shirt underneath, and Troy looked dashing in his Constable costume. 

“Yeah, very cool,” he grinned at her, and Annie rolled her eyes. 

“So we’ll be doing the Cambaire Machine, the first episode Professor Lily appeared in. Both parts, if there’s time.” Abed said, taking the lead as always. “Ready?” His friends nodded, and he straightened visibly. “Splendid.”

*~*

Constable Reggie was clinging to the top of a runaway hovercraft, slipping just a little further down every second. The hovercraft was zipping over the city of New New London, in the midst of the Third System war, between the citizens of New Earth and the Reichians of Deutchon Five, who had an almost religious hate for the human race, and aimed to wipe them off the face of the galaxy.

Just as he was about to slip off, he was caught in mid-air as if he were about to belly flop into a pool by what appeared to be a tractor beam, a waving liquid shine in bright purple. A female voice piped in out of nowhere. “Hang tight there, boyo. I’ve got you.”

“Who’s got me?” Reggie wailed, “And, you know, how?”

“I’m just programming your coordinates into the computer. I’ll have you down in a jiff. Just stay as still as you can and keep your legs and arms inside the beam at all times.” 

“Coordinates?” Reggie asked, but the voice acted like she hadn’t heard him.

“Oh, and can you turn off your cellphone, pretty please? Seriously, the radiation it emits mucks with the machinery.”

“Oh, come on. Nobody ever believes that.” The Constable muttered, but he pulled out his U-Phone and turned it off.  
“That’s much better dear, thanks.”

“Yeah, I’m sure. Everything’s fantastic now. I’m hanging in the sky during the middle of an alien attack on a planet I’ve never been to before in a uniform from another century! But it’s okay, because my cell phone is off!” Reggie screamed, once again on the verge of panic.  
“Just a second,” the voice sang, and a long, panic-stricken second later she piped in again. “Alright, I’ve got it. Now hold on tight!”

“To what?!?”

“Hm. Fair point.” 

Reggie began sliding down the tractor beam like it was some freaky ethereal waterslide, and he screamed at the top of his lungs, sure that he was going to slip out and continue his fall onto the city of New New London and he’d never see the Inspector or his girlfriend Minnie again.

But at the last second there was a disorienting flash of light, and he found himself in the arms of a very attractive woman, in what appeared to be a space ship. “You’re fine,” she was saying to him, straining slightly under his weight. “You’re just fine. The tractor beam tends to disorient, but you’re fine.” She set him on his feet, supporting him with one arm.

As he got his breathing and nausea under control, the Constable took in his rescuer. She had to be somewhere in her early to mid-twenties, with disarmingly blue eyes. Her dark hair fell over her leather-clad shoulders in waves. She arched an eyebrow at him, but smiled becomingly, and Reggie found it a bit difficult to breath normally in a way that had nothing to do with his harrowing adventure. 

“Um… hi,” he said, with what he hoped was a charming grin. 

The lady let her eyes rake over him and her grin turned suggestive. “Hello.”

“Hello.” She just stared and he shook his head, heat rushing to his face. “Sorry, said that already.”  
“Are you okay?”  
“Oh, yeah. Just fine, me. Get into these predicaments all the time. What, are you expecting me to swoon?” 

“It’s just, you look a bit dazed there.”

“Hey, you’re the one that’s gone all fuzzy…” Reginald’s eyes rolled back as he fell forward, and the leather-clad woman had to catch him before he hit the metal floor. 

*~*

Meanwhile, the Inspector had found his way into a mansion, following a small troop of burglars in sleek cybernetic cat-suits inside. The owners had been evacuated to a moon-base weeks ago, just in case the Reichians succeeded in the conquest of New Earth. It was really only a matter of time before someone tried to break in.

The Inspector watched as the small cadre of burglars cut through the positronic force field with a specialized device, and use a small dimensional transistor to get through the neutronized glass. It took only a short time, and soon they were slipping like shadows inside the large building. The Inspector slipped in after them. 

“Blimey, look at all this stuff,” one of the men said, looking at his leader, the young lady who had confronted the Inspector in the alley earlier that night. “Some of this must be off the black market.”

“It doesn’t matter where they got it,” she snapped at him. “Only that it’s ours now.”

“Yes, I’m sure it could fetch quite a lot on the interplanetary market,” The Inspector said softly. 

The thieves whipped around to face them, activating their laser swords, but their leader stopped them with a wave of her hand. “It’s alright. He’s not meant to be here either.” She took a step forward, lifting her goggles up and placing them on her head. 

“So. A gang of thieves, are you? Striking at the abandoned homes of the rich during an attack, so the police and military will be too busy to respond to any calls for help from an empty house. But why? Surely you’re not starving. That’s up to the minute technology in your hands, to be able to cut through anti-invasion fields and all the other anti-thievery devices that are sure to be in place.”

“No, we’re not poor,” one of the thieves said, stepping forward. He and the rest of his crew powered their swords down at the nod of their leader and he went on. “But the people we give all the profit to are.” 

“Oi, Jameson, knock it off. He could be a bobby.” His mate said, cuffing the first man behind the head.

“No, I’m not part of your police force,” the Inspector said, a small sneer appearing on his face. “If I were, you’d all be incapacitated by now. So, you lot are latter-day Merry Men, then? Stealing from the rich and giving to the poor?”

“Not like these lot deserve anything,” the first thief said, ignoring the glare from his friend. “Leaving the first sign of trouble, but locking their valuables away from them that could use them. You know where our profit goes to? Straight to the families of those who are fighting this bleeding war, defending our planet, and to the veterans the government ain’t paying properly.” He punctuated his small speech with a nod. 

The Inspector’s eyes traveled from him to their young leader, scrutinizing her. She must have been younger than all of them, yet they followed her lead without qualm. “How noble of you. Marxism in action, really.”

The young woman frowned. “Why did you follow me here? What do you want?”

“I want to know how that thing got into my DARSIT. Especially considering how it didn’t have a key,” annoyance slipped into the Inspector’s voice, though his face betrayed nothing. “You seem to be the one to ask.”

“I did you a favor. I told you not to go in that tourist contraption. And that’s all I can tell you,” her mouth formed a hard line, and the Inspector nodded.

“I appreciate it, then. Now, I’m also looking for a young man in a 21st century Constable’s uniform. A specific one,” he went on, a small amused smile quirking his lips, “I didn’t just happen to have a craving.” The two thieves laughed, but their leader’s frown deepened.

“Sorry,” she said sarcastically, “haven’t seen anyone like that around. Now, is there anything else you need before you leave?”

“Thanks for asking. I’m looking for something – a weapon, a piece of technology that would far surpass even yours. It should have materialized out of nowhere a few weeks ago – I caught it jumping through timelines…” The Inspector dug around in his pockets to produce a pen and paper. “It would have appeared somewhere conspicuous, so the military couldn’t have covered it up, though not for lack of trying.” He began drawing on the small pad of paper, an approximation of a cylinder. “Would have looked something like this.”

He finished his rather shoddy drawing and passed it to the young woman, her compatriots peering over her shoulders. She took one look and handed it back to him roughly. 

“I…”

A sound like thunder clapped behind them, and the Inspector wheeled around quickly

He heard the young woman swallow. “Did you remember to put the positron field back up?” She asked her associate roughly. 

“Honey? Honey?” a disembodied voice, deep and rich and male, sang from nowhere. “Is that you, honey? Hon-ey.”

The Inspector watched as the young woman surged forth, a look of terror on her face, but she brought up her small device to the thin invisible skin of the positronic force field, quickly entering a code. A second later, he felt it close like static on his skin. 

“What is it? What’s going on? Having a disagreement with one of your fellow thieves, Robin?”

“It’s not one of us,” she said quickly. “It’s not even human.” 

“Hon-ey…”

Her eyes went wider. “It can’t, can it?” She wondered out loud, but she shook her head, and then wheeled around to face her men. “Alright, we’re getting out of here. We’ll slip through the house and exit through the back gardens.”  
“But we haven’t got…”

“There’s no time for that. Come on, move!” She started running, grabbing her dufflebag off the floor and setting off towards the back of the house. Her men followed her, looking as confused as the Inspector felt. 

He let them go, more interested in the new apparition then in where the erstwhile thieves were headed. 

The voice spoke again. “Hon-ey. Honey, is that you? Will you let me in dear?”

The Inspector went towards the front door, and peered out. “Don’t!” 

He looked back to see the young woman, standing across the room, as if she didn’t dare to come any closer. “Don’t what?”

“Don’t go out there. Don’t let him get you.”

The Inspector frowned. “What happens if he ‘gets me?’”

“He feeds off of you,” she replied, her blue eyes wide and wild. “He feeds off of your energy, and you become like him. All empty inside. Now come on!”

There was another crack of what sounded like thunder, and the Inspector felt the positronic field flicker and fade. 

“That’s him,” she said, voice going soft. “He can disrupt energy fields, walk through force fields like they’re not even there. Walls, too, given enough time.” Her face went stubborn. “I’m leaving with my boys, right out through the back. If you have any sense you’ll do the same.” With that, she fled out of the entryway. 

The Inspector turned back towards the entrance, patting his pocket softly to make sure he had the quantum spanner on him. It clicked softly against his optic pocketknife he applied pressure, and he nodded to himself. Come what may, he was prepared. He went toward the door and opened it, ever so slightly.

“Hon-ey. Hon-ey. Are you there honey? Let me in. I want to make sure you’re alright.” 

“Whoever you’re calling for,” the Inspector shouted, sticking his head out of the crack. There – he could make out a silhouette on the sprawling lawn. From what he could tell, it was a man, probably middle aged. “He or she isn’t here.”

“Honey? Are you there, honey?”

“Sorry to say, your ‘honey’ is not. Nobody here but us chickens,” the Inspector smiled to himself at the reference. He leaned forward a little. “So, Mr. Mysterious Silhouette. Why were they so frightened of you? What have you done to strike such terror into the hearts of other human beings?”

He received no answer, and by the time he had opened the door all the way and stepped out into the crisp New New London night, the shadow-man had gone without a trace. 

*~*

Constable Reggie awoke groggily. He sat up groggily. It took him a moment to remember where he was, and how he had got there, and he took a moment to survey the scene. He was on a space ship, a proper space ship and apparently a pretty battered one. The whole place screamed space age, all chrome and glass and straight edges and metal grates on the floor covering the tubes that did God-knows-what. It wasn’t as shiny as he thought it should be. Wasn’t the future supposed to be all white and austere but strangely comfortable?

A groan slipped out as he sat up, letting his savior know he was awake.

A second later, she was by the bench built into the wall that must have served her as a bed, concern in her big blue eyes. “Are you okay now?” He looked up at her, but said nothing. She leaned in a little closer and waved her hands in front of his eyes. “Hello?”

“Hello,” he said timidly, rubbing the back of his head.

“Hello,” she replied, giving him a winning smile that set his heart beating just a little faster. 

He chuckled nervously. “Let’s not get into that again.” 

She laughed with him. “Fair enough.” 

The Constable stood up, steadying himself on the metallic walls. “So, um… I don’t believe I caught your name?”

“I didn’t give it.” Her smile broadened, her entire face lighting up with amusement. She fished a small piece of paper out of her leather jacket and handed it to him. “Professor Lillian Taylor. I’m here undercover as a general in the Astroforce. Off-duty, of course,” she winked at him, “but I’m really here studying the Third System war for a paper. Didn’t realize it’d be so exciting. But you can call me Lily.”

“Cool mental memopad,” Reggie said, turning it over.

“Sorry, what?” Her smile had faded a little, but the Constable hadn’t noticed.

“It’s a mental memopad, right? I have a friend that uses this all the time,” he glanced up at her and grinned. This was where he was comfortable; the weird and alien and ever slightly so dangerous. “It’s supposed to tell me whatever you want it to, right? But this… this says that you’re single and a tad on the adventurous side.” He handed it back to her.

“Mental memopads are tricky things,” she said as she accepted the proffered pad.

“Mm. Can’t let your mind wander when you’re handing it off.”

“Right you can’t. And according to this, you have a sort-of girlfriend back home called Minnie Schmidt, but you consider yourself available. Very available, actually,” she teased. “Very very.”

Reggie felt heat pooling into his cheeks, his eyes flicking down to the floor. “Um, maybe we can try getting along without the mental memopad, huh?”

“We could try it.”

Reggie took a step, surveying the ship. It was smaller than he had thought originally. About the size of the inside of the DARSIT when there were only two people, just big enough for two people to cohabitate without running into each other all the time, but still pretty cramped. “Nice ship.”

“Thank you,” she said, accepting the compliment gracefully. 

“Yeah, it’s very Star Trek.”

Lily’s smile faltered. “I’m sorry?”

“Nothing,” he shook his head. “So, you said you were here studying the war? Guess you’re not from around here then, huh?”

She arched an eyebrow at him. “With your antiquated cell phone and cotton-poly blend, I’d guess you’re either a very dedicated 21st century reenactor, or you’re not from around here either.”

“You’d guess right,” he said, as he walked down what there was of the hall, eventually getting to what appeared to be a Captain’s chair. A wave of dizziness hit him as he approached and he had to grab the nearest wall to stop himself from falling.

“You okay?”

“Yeah, just a little…”

Lily stepped inside of his space, peering at him with a small frown. Without permission, she grabbed each of his eyelids in turn and held them up, staring into each eye with a strange intensity. 

“Hey, what are you…?”

“It appears you’ve been a tad addled by the tractor beam. More than is normal, anyway. Never fear, though. I’ll have you patched up in a minute.” She looked down at her wrist, at a cuff with what appeared to be a screen inside. She jabbed at it a few times and a small swarm of golden motes danced about his head, putting the world back into focus. 

She looked at his eyes again. “You know, you can stop pretending now. I know you’re a Chronocop. You have all the hallmarks, and the outfit isn’t exactly subtle. I don’t know how you expected to fool one of your own. Well, former one of your own.”

“A what now?”

“A Chronocop,” she repeated slowly, as if his brain damage might not be caused by the tractor beam after all. “You know, running around space and time, setting aberrations to rights, and mucking it up more often than not? You must be new. I’ve been expecting one of you to track me down for a while now, though I have to say I did not expect you to fall off a hovercraft.”

“Yeah… sometimes I just get a little… carried away. Hey, so what were those fireflies?”

She arched an eyebrow at him. “You must be rattled. They’re called picodriods. Subatomic robots. The air is full of them- that was just them manifesting to fix your head. But let’s get down to business, shall we?”

“Business?” 

“Yes, business,” she gave him an anticipatory grin. “Shall we have a drink first? I never like doing business sober. Takes all the fun out of it.” She turned, pressing a button on her wrist computer. To Reggie’s surprise, it caused a part of the ceiling to descend, turning into stairs. “Grab those glasses, will you?” She added, as she snagged a bottle and went up to the roof.  
The Constable did as he was bid and followed her upstairs, into the night sky.  
What he saw shocked him. They were in space, wheeling slowly through an ever shifting tableau of stars, but he could breathe, and the pressure hadn’t changed in the slightest. “How…?”

“Oh, do you not have atmo-stabilizing fields where you come from? I was going to park on New Earth, but with the war and everything, I didn’t think it safe,” Lily said, “Can’t have my ride getting blown up accidently.”

Reggie looked down with a yelp, as he saw nothing but the expanse of space stretching down below him. 

She laughed, a rich sound that made his hair stand on end, though it might have been the idea of floating in space without dying. Then he heard a whirring sound, and a shape materialized below him. 

“You have an invisible spaceship? That’s so cool!” 

“Mm. Tethered it up to one of the moons, so it won’t get lost or destroyed,” Lily went on. “Shall we have that drink now?” With an expert move, she popped the cork on the bottle, laughing at his surprise, and poured them a dram.

*~*

The Inspector had finally tracked down the girl the silhouette was after, back to their lair in a seedier section of town. It had taken him a tad longer than he thought it would, but they were still there when he arrived. 

“Evening,” He said as he entered the basement they were holed up in. The young woman whipped around, her eyes wide.

“How did you find us? Nobody has ever…”

“I’m quite the experienced tracker, as it turns out.. As is that thing that is chasing you and your men. Looks like a man, but isn’t, and it started a few weeks ago, correct?” The young woman stared, which he took as an invitation to go on. “The thing I’m looking for – it landed then, and you know exactly what I’m referring to, don’t you.”

The young woman frowned, looking lost, and one of her men stepped up. “Nancy, you don’t have to…”

“Please,” The Inspector interrupted. “I’m only here to help.”

The young woman, Nancy, nodded. “Something materialized in Trafalgar Square about that time. We thought it was a bomb, but it didn’t explode, or do anything really. It just sat there. Soldiers came out in droves to secure the area – whole place is on lockdown now. You’d never get near it.”

“You’d be surprised what I am capable of, when I want something.”

“Then there’s someone you need to see first. The Inspector,” His eyes widened almost imperceptibly. “He was the first one on the scene.” She straightened up, and turned back to her men. “You stay here, I’ll be back in a jiff.” And with that she strode out of the hideout, only pausing when she got to the door to throw the Inspector a look. “Well come on, if you’re coming.”

*~*

“Actually, I should be getting back. The Inspector… Well, he’s probably wondering where I am and…”

Lily pouted prettily at the Constable. “You haven’t even finished your drink yet, and besides. We were just getting to the good part.” She took a sip of her champagne and walked towards him. “So… I take it you’re not traveling alone, but are you authorized by your superiors to negotiate?”

“Negotiate what?”

Lily sighed and leaned in, until they were only inches apart. “I have what you’ve been looking for, that the Chrono Constabulary has been looking for. Your secret weapon. And I’m willing to give it back, for a price. Are you authorized to discuss payment?”

Reggie swallowed, and leaned as far back as his footing would allow. “I should probably talk to my… associate, first.”

She arched a brow and quirked her lips. “Associate?” She closed the gap between them, placing a hand on his chest. “Just how disappointed should I be, hm?”

His throat went dry. “Um… we’re standing in the middle of space, during an alien attack. Should we really be flirting or…”  
Lily made a moue of disappointment, but stepped back. “As you wish.” 

“Well,” he retracted quickly. “We don’t have to stop, really… I mean…”

Her very expressive eyes danced. “Do you like Glenn Millar?” Suddenly, before he had time to process, there was music playing and she was in his arms, twirling him about. On a spaceship tethered to the moon. His head was spinning from too much champagne and the scent of her. 

“It’s the year 31,042, Common Earth Era on the Universally Recognized Timeline. The height of the Third System War, in the middle of what will be known as the New Earth Thunder. And right in the middle of it all sits your secret weapon against the Blorgon menace, developed and completed circa 51,563,” she whispered in his ear as they waltzed. “And I know exactly where it is, because I put it there. And I’m willing to give it back to you, if you can just name the right price. But you’ll have to be quick. In only a few hours, a Reichian bomb will fall in the middle of New New London, wiping out a good quarter of the city, and incidentally, that quarter is where your weapon is. So, you have a deadline rapidly approaching. Shall we discuss payment?”

Reggie’s mind raced, finding it difficult to keep up with a beautiful young woman pressed against him, one hand on his chest, the other playing along his wrist. “Were you saying something just there?”

All coyness went out of her like a light going out, and she stepped back just a little to give him room to breathe. “Two hours, then the bomb goes off and there will be nothing left. Are you getting any of this?”

“You, uh, used to work for the Chrono Constabulary, but you stole this miraculous super weapon and are now trying to blackmail them.”

She leaned in again, eyes dancing. “Blackmail is such an ugly term, but… that’s the idea of it. So, this… associate of yours. Is he the one I should be bargaining with?”

Reggie smirked a little. “I delegate most of the bargaining to him, yeah. Gives me time for more… important things.” He pulled her closer, just a little.

“Then perhaps we should find him, hm?” With one last brush of her generous chest against his, she stepped back, out of his reach. “I’ll just scan for alien tech and…”

Reggie watched as she typed away at her wrist computer, impressed. Finally, here was someone who knew what she was doing. 

*~*

Nancy led the Inspector through the back alleys and streets of New New London town, sticking to the shadows. They were quiet for the most part, the Inspector quietly puzzling things out. Finally, he decided he needed more information. 

“May I ask you a question?”

Nancy’s eyes flicked over to him, and she frowned. “I suppose.”

“Who did you lose?” He looked over at her shocked expression and explained. “No one gets into altruistic thievery without a personal reason, a personal crusade. A friend, a relative who needed the money. Who was yours?”

Nancy licked her lips. “My father. One night, he was going out to get his government check. He’d been wounded in the war, on the front lines, and couldn’t work. I was there to look after him. The thing… it materialized on him, or near him…” She swallowed. “And that was that. He was gone.”

The Inspector nodded. “You know, it’s remarkable.”

“What is?” Nancy asked, disoriented from the mood whiplash.

“The Reichian warmachine has been spreading through the system, taking every civilization in its wake. Nothing can stop it. Nothing stands in its way. But then one little fledgling planet, just out of the backwater, stands up and says no. Not here. Not in our system.” If he had been able to, he would have laughed, instead he just stared, intensity coming off of him in waves. “A mouse in front of a lion. You’re simply astounding, all of you.” He shook his head in an illusion of amusement. “And after what you all end up doing to the Flint faction, and their leaders, well… I must say, you frighten even me.”

Nancy led him to Westminster Station, a complex off of Trafalgar Square where the Inspector was said to work. The entire square was shut down, but for the soldiers stationed around an opaque enclosure, and the police station looked abandoned. 

The Inspector, the real Inspector, got in without any trouble, and walked along its dimly lit corridors, through the jail cells filled with cots, each one containing a dark cut-out of a human shape. That’s all they were. Different shapes, certainly, but made of dark, matte, unchanging space, as if someone had cut a person-shaped hole in the universe. 

He had made it to the third floor when he felt another presence behind him. 

“You’ll find them everywhere, I’m afraid. Every cell, every office. Hundreds of them.” He turned around to see a middle aged man in the trench coat of an Inspector and a rumpled suit. 

“Yes,” he replied. “I saw.”

“And who are you, if I may be so bold.”

“I’m… hm. Are you the Inspector?”

“Inspector Casey, and this is my associate, Doctor Bull.” He waved his hand to the elderly man behind him, with the cane and lab coat who followed him into the room, once an office for the beats to file their reports, now a sickbay, cots covering every spare inch of floor. “He’s here to make sure they’re comfortable.”

“And you are?” The Doctor asked, steepling his hands on the knob of his cane.

“Nancy sent me,” the Inspector replied quickly, looking from one man to another.

“Nancy, eh?” Casey asked. The man and his companion walked into the office, past the rows of cots with shadowed men on them. “That means you must have been asking about what happened in Trafalgar square.”

The Inspector nodded, and the Doctor picked up where his friend left off. “And what do you know if it?”

“Not as much as I’d like,” the Inspector admitted. “Hence my asking. What do you know?”

The other men shared a glance, and sat down at a nearby desk, the elderly doctor in the plush office chair and the inspector on the desk itself, one foot on the floor to steady himself. “Only what it has done,” the doctor replied. 

“They won’t let us near the thing itself. We’re just doing emergency triage here. Trying to make the victims comfortable,” Casey continued. “Since apparently there is nothing else to be done for them.” 

“All these people. All of them were victims of the thing that materialized?”

Casey looked down at Constantine, who took the liberty of answering. “No, not all. This… whatever it is, virus, contagion, biological weapon. It spread to all the personnel from the original victim. It spreads by physical contact, so don’t touch any of them.”

The Inspector nodded, staying where he was. He didn’t need to investigate further, and the last thing he wanted was to touch any of the living silhouettes. “How did this start?”

“There was a victim from the materialization.” Casey replied. “A man who was partly crushed by it, and covered in what appeared to be some sort of crude fuel. Gasoline or oil or something, ancient, outdated stuff. The inky darkness spread over him, and soon enough, he was as you see them now. A being of shadow.”

“The station’s emergency medical team went out to retrieve him,” Constantine continued. “We have fields in place to stop airborne contagions, and they were all wearing their Dag-Cir suits, gloves included. They were fine. But anyone whose skin came in contact with the patient’s… it happened by accident the first time, and that nurse had turned to shadow within twenty-four hours. Anyone who had had physical contact with her in that time contracted it, so on and so forth.

“All in all, it’s less people than could be expected in a disaster like this. Over half the facility got out unscathed. After the first… conversion, we forced all personal to remain for an extended 24 hours, to make sure no one else contracted the illness, then placed them in a separate quarantine. That was weeks ago. As far as we know the only ones with this strange pathogen remain inside these walls.

“And the best thing is, they’re not dead.” He punctuated the statement with the slam of his cane on the ground, and suddenly, all the silhouettes sat up from their cots.

The Inspector remained impassive. 

“They don’t do much,” Casey went on. “Just sit there. As far as we know, there are no life signs. They don’t breathe; they don’t require nourishment or anything. They just… exist.”

“And no one is doing anything about this?” 

Constantine shrugged. “The government is afraid that any attempts to examine them will result in more conversions, so we’ve been cut off from the rest of the world. Full quarantine. Inspector Casey and I continue as best we can, searching for a cure and keeping them comfortable, but there really isn’t anything left to be done.”

“We suspect they don’t care if we find a cure or not,” Casey admitted with a shrug. “There’s probably already a plan in place to blow up the entire precinct and blame it on a Reichian attack.”

He looked over at his friend, and frowned. The Inspector followed his gaze. Slowly, the wheels clicked into place. 

“Oh no.” 

Constantine had always looked sort of muted since the Inspector met him, something that could be attributed to the terrible lighting. But now he looked cast in shadow, as though he was sitting directly in the glow of the lamplight. The doctor looked down at himself, horror in his darkening eyes. He stood up and backed away from the desk. 

“John…”

“No, stay back, Brian.” Constantine said softly, his voice barely above a whisper. “I must have… I must have spilled some of the shadow on myself in the lab.” He laughed softly. “I guess, for all our precautions, I wasn’t careful enough. You must go find Nancy, Brian. The first victim was her father, and you know as well as I do she knows more than she is letting on. You must… you must… hon…” he started choking struggling to get the words out. 

“Honey…”

Casey stepped back, walking towards the Inspector with brisk steps, but keeping his eyes on his quickly fading friend. “Oh, Merciful Universe…”

It was as if someone had cut Constantine out of reality and forgotten to put anything in his place. A faceless, featureless shape of void inhabited the spot where he had been, but once there, did nothing. 

Both Inspectors just stared until a loud banging from somewhere behind them caught their attention. “Stay here.” The definite article inspector said just before he loped off to investigate. 

In the long, dimly lit hallway, he could make out two figures heading towards him. One was clearly Constable Reggie, but the second figure was shorter, and definitely female. He felt his eyes narrow, hoping he hadn’t brought another one of his bimbos along for the ride. He didn’t think that he could handle it after Eve.

But the woman’s voice was smooth and competent when she spoke, and when her eyes met his, he felt a jolt where his heart should be. 

“Good evening.” She grasped his hand firmly, letting her fingers trail to his wrist to slip along his veins. She didn’t flinch at his unexpectedly cool body temperature, or lack of pulse. No, the Inspector concluded, she was nothing like Eve. “I’m Lily Tyler. You must be the associate I’ve been hearing so much about. The Constable here could not stop talking about you.” With her other hand she clapped Reginald on the shoulder, and grinning becomingly.

“She knows,” Reginald piped in. “I had to tell her, about us being Chronocops. She’s the reason we’re here.”

The Inspector glanced at him and nodded. They had been through enough subterfuge together that was all it took. 

“Well, I for one am pleased to meet you, Inspector Data.” She winked at him as she brushed bas him, leaving the Inspector to stare at his associate in confusion. 

“Data?” he asked, nose wrinkling the tiniest bit in distaste.

“Well, it’s not like you have an actual name,” Reggie defended. “I had to make something up. Don’t you ever get tired of going by ‘Inspector’? Inspector what? Who?”

“A millennia and a fifth in, I’m coping,” he replied acidly. “Now where’ve you been? There’s a war going on out there. Not exactly the best time for a stroll.”

“Who’s strolling? After you left me in that alley, I somehow found myself hanging for dear life on the top of someone’s hovercraft, that I’m pretty sure was hovering way above the speed limit. But hey, only way to see an alien attack.”

“What?”

“By the way, what is the Chrono Constabulary?”

The Inspector paused. “You had better bring me up to speed, Constable. Why did you bring her to me?”

As they strode though the hallway, following Lily into the room filled with shadow-people, Reggie explained Lily’s blackmail scheme, and the Inspector’s eyes widened. “A weapon against the Blorgons?” Reggie could almost see the cogs turning behind his friends eyes. “What kind of weapon…”

They slipped through the doors, almost colliding with Lily who had stopped in the doorway, her blue eyes wide with terror. “This isn’t… this isn’t possible.”

Casey stood by his friend, very carefully not touching him, bright eyes trained on her.

“Your device did this, didn’t it?” The Inspector asked, advancing on her. “Your secret weapon against the most hateful species in the galaxy? This, this contagion, started at the bomb site, after you materialized your bait. What kind of weapon is it?”

“A bioweapon,” she said, her voice stricken. “We called it the Cambaire Machine. It produces… houses, really, this bioweapon. An untested, radicle bioweapon, but not for the Blorgons. For us. A virus that gets inside and makes its host the ultimate anti-Blorgon weapon. Turn you into a shadow, so they can’t sight you to fire at you, make you nonexistent to things like radar and infrared radiation. The beams from their weapons slide right past you. You become an absence, and even Blorgons can’t fight nothing. Or at least that’s what it was supposed to do, what we designed it to do. It had never been tested properly. We were still working out kinks.” She turned on her heels to face them. “And apparently it didn’t work, or the Chrono Constabulary would have sent actual agents after me.” She stared at Reggie. “You weren’t sent by them were you?”

“We’ll be asking the questions, thank you,” the Inspector said, but she continued her tirade as if she hadn’t heard him. 

“I should have known – your time ship is nothing like what the Constabulary uses. I’ve never seen such a ridiculous color in my life, bright red. You couldn’t have painted it a tasteful blue or something?” she snapped at them, and then sighed, visibly troubled. “I went through all that trouble to steal it from them, even leaving a light but obvious trail to bring Chronocops here and blackmail the Constabulary, and finally, finally get some answers. Maybe even get my life back. But I end up stealing junk, and worst of all, its unstable junk that actually works!”  
It was then that all the shadowpeople sat up, and started calling in their myriad voices.

“Inspector, what’s going on?” Reggie asked, taking a step back.

“I’m not sure. Mr. Casey?”

The silver-haired man backed up with them as the shadowpeople stood and slowly advanced. “I don’t know. They’ve… they’ve never done this before.”

The shadows continued to advance, and the foursome backed up towards the door as quickly as possible. 

“Whatever you do,” the Inspector warned. “Don’t let them touch you.”

“Why not?” Reggie asked, fear trilling his voice. 

“Because they’ll spread whatever they have to you.” The shadowpeople advanced slowly, ever so slowly, calling out for whoever they were searching for. And there was nowhere to run.

*~*

“Computer, end simulation.” Inspector Abed called, and the shadowpeople, the police station, faded around them, leaving only the Dreamatorium and its familiar grid pattern. He turned on his feel, facing his friends, with a small smile, as much emotion as he ever really showed. “Excellent job you two – I really felt the terror, especially there at the end. And Annie, you were a fantastic Lily.”

Annie felt a blush work her way up her neck and face. It was high praise, really high praise coming from Abed, considering Lily was such a complex character: a former scientist employed by the Chrono Constabulary who lost several years’ worth of memory to her former bosses, leaving her with a hole in her life. Now knowing that the Constabulary was not above using illegal memory altering practices, she left, hoping to blackmail them into returning her memories, only to find that they didn’t care about the experimental weapon she stole. 

She was confident and clever, self-serving and flirtatious, but she was there when it counted, and in the end, had sacrificed herself to save the Inspector and the Constable.

“Thanks, Abed”

“Oh, why did you stop the simulation. We were just getting to the good part,” Troy whined. “We were just getting to the good part.”

“Do you mean Reggie’s upcoming kiss with Lily, or the dancing with the Inspector?” Annie teased as she slipped off her leather jacket. 

Troy looked down to his feet and muttered something under his breath. 

“The simulation was going well,” Abed said, cocking his head slightly. “I just wanted to save some for later. We’ve got the entire winter break to get through, and Lily’s only in two and a half seasons.”

Annie shrugged. “Well, we could always start making up our own adventures, when those episodes run out. Or I guess I could start playing Diana, but I never really liked her much. She really seemed to hate the Inspector; she fought with him at every opportunity.” Her nose wrinkled slightly, “or Mona, I really liked Mona, though she got her memory erased at the end.”

“But Constable Reggie got left in that alternate dimension halfway through the fourth season of the reboot. He was never in the same episodes as Diana or Mona,” Abed replied. “I guess we could…”

“Guys, guys.” Troy laughed. “We’ve got the entire winter break to decide. We can do anything we want. And right now, what I want, is some macaroni and cheese and a Blade marathon. What do you think?”

Annie looked at Abed and smiled. He nodded back. “Blade it is.”

“Cool. Coolcoolcool.”

**Author's Note:**

> It goes a bit against "accepted" Inspector Spacetime canon, but the idea of Lily being the Captain Jack had been nipping at me for a bit, so I decided to give it a whirl and just have a bit of fun with it. Just hope it was enjoyable.


End file.
